Monthly Archives: July 2010

Women Do Not Make Good Executive Managers

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The title of this post is pat­ently absurd.

The pur­pose of a title like Women Do Not Make Good Exec­ut­ive Man­agers is to appeal to any­one who holds a strong view on the mat­ter (and wel­come to this blog — I hope the fol­low­ing thoughts don’t hurt too much!). Admit­tedly, I could have chosen the title, Men Do Not Make Good Exec­ut­ive Man­agers, but that was in a strange twist of polit­ical cor­rect­ness, less con­tro­ver­sial and atten­tion grabbing.

Key skill of a lucid man­ager is the abil­ity to chal­lenge your own beliefs and respond to evid­ence and data. In the words of Carl Sagan:

It is bet­ter by far to embrace the hard truth than a reas­sur­ing fable.”

I’ll lay my cards on the table here and let you know that I per­son­ally believe that the effect­ive­ness of an Exec­ut­ive Man­ager is a com­bin­a­tion of intel­li­gence, people skills, train­ing, innov­at­ive think­ing, tech­nical know­ledge, cor­por­ate and team cul­ture com­bined with myriad external factors. Gender, of its own accord, is unlikely to sig­ni­fic­antly change the Executive’s effectiveness. Regardless, a vast major­ity of Exec­ut­ive Man­agers in Aus­tralia (and other coun­tries) are males.1.

So, if more Exec­ut­ive Man­agers are male, does that imply that males are more pre­dis­posed to being Exec­ut­ives? The simple answer is, ‘No”. This type of reas­on­ing is a com­mon logical fal­lacy known as post hoc ergo prop­tor hoc, which is a pop­u­lar device among politi­cians. In this case the fal­lacy lies in the assump­tion that the fact that most Exec­ut­ive Man­agers are male (post hoc) is proof that they are exec­ut­ives because of their gender (ergo prop­tor hoc). While the absurdity of this extreme example may seem obvi­ous, less obvi­ous fal­la­cies go undetec­ted in the work­place. It seems that crit­ical think­ing is less likely to be engaged when encoun­ter­ing many of the pop­u­lar per­son­al­ity tests.2.

Many dif­fer­ent per­son­al­ity tests are used around the world to sep­ar­ate people into cat­egor­ies. The inten­tion is to sug­gest a beha­vi­oural or career pre­dis­pos­i­tion; an example being those cat­egor­ised as ENTJ — “The Exec­ut­ive”, the clear implic­a­tion being “ENTJs Make Bet­ter Exec­ut­ives”. In some cases research is claimed, but rarely cited, to demon­strate that par­tic­u­lar ‘types’ are found in par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sions or roles imply­ing that people of a par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity pro­file are most appro­pri­ate for that type of role. This post hoc ergo prop­ter hoc ration­al­isa­tion is as unjus­ti­fi­able as the state­ment “Women Do Not Make Good Exec­ut­ive Man­agers”. It is this type of ration­al­isa­tion that can under­mine the decision-making pro­cess of any man­ager which, in turn, under­mines their effectiveness.

A lucid man­ager will be more effect­ive if aware of decision-making traps

On a daily basis man­agers are faced with many decisions and each manager’s effect­ive­ness is, in a large part, determ­ined by the effect­ive­ness of their decision-making abil­ity. A lucid man­ager will be more effect­ive if aware of decision-making traps such as post hoc jus­ti­fic­a­tions; par­tic­u­larly when the faced with the ques­tion, “Do you think we should use a per­son­al­ity test?”.

When con­fron­ted by this ques­tion it is far bet­ter for a man­ager to chal­lenge their own beliefs and to pos­sibly even embrace hard truths by ask­ing whether per­son­al­ity tests are merely a reas­sur­ing fable.

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Notes
  1. For fur­ther inform­a­tion check the 2008 EOWA Aus­tralian Census of Women in Lead­er­ship which reports that only 10.7% of ASX200 Exec­ut­ive Man­agers were women des­pite women com­pris­ing 44.9% of the Aus­tralian Labour Force. [↩]
  2. See also our pre­vi­ous post, The Lies we Tell and a reflect­ive essay on the use of per­son­al­ity tests, Know Thy­self. [↩]

Positions Vacant

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Would you like to work on the front lines of con­tem­por­ary management?

Hypo­thet­icorp is hir­ing and we are look­ing for people that don’t fit  the cul­ture of their cur­rent work­place and have dif­fi­culty being aligned with cor­por­ate goals. At Hypo­thet­icorp we believe that the only thing you have to be aligned with is your  own self.

We acknow­ledge that devi­ant beha­viour and tak­ing cal­cu­lated risks is the found­a­tion of  innov­a­tion. We there­fore look for inde­pend­ent crit­ical thinkers who can add  value to Hypotheticorp.

If this was a real recruit­ment add it would have been a very odd one indeed. Most com­pan­ies are look­ing for so called align­ment and match­ing cul­tural val­ues. At Hypo­thet­icorp we believe that this will lead to a severe lack of innovation.

The major cor­por­ate col­lapses and scan­dals of the recent years have caused a tight­en­ing of cor­por­ate gov­ernance and many organ­isa­tions have moved away from open mod­els of lead­er­ship that value self ini­ti­at­ive to more regi­men­ted mod­els of management.

Even though the west­ern world is waging war to spread demo­cracy around the globe, the one aspect that dom­in­ates most people’s lives, their work­places, are ideally mer­ito­cra­cies, but are mostly more like dic­tat­or­ships.  Most organ­isa­tions are man­aged through clear hier­arch­ical lines and people are not very likely to go against the grain.

Research shows that employ­ees do not only remain silent because of a fear of retri­bu­tion, but also because it is per­ceived as a waste of their time. This silence cre­ates psy­cho­lo­gical ten­sion and cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance and even­tu­ally less com­mit­ment with organ­isa­tional goals.1.

Organ­isa­tional devi­ance is, how­ever, a major source of innov­a­tion. Without the free­dom to make mis­takes there can be no learn­ing. The cur­rent wave of tightened cor­por­ate gov­ernance leads to the silen­cing of dis­sent­ing voices and prun­ing of innov­at­ive actions. The ulti­mate con­sequence of this is the impov­er­ish­ment of man­age­ment practices.

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Notes
  1. Detert, James R., Burris, E. R., & Har­rison, D. A. (n.d.). Debunk­ing four myths about employee silence. Har­vard Busi­ness Review, 88(6), 26. [↩]

The Virtues of Nepotism

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Nepot­ism is con­sidered one of the great sins of West­ern cul­ture. As soci­ety has been lev­elled by remov­ing class dis­tinc­tions and shaped to cre­ate a level play­ing field for every­body, regard­less of race, reli­gion, gender. Fam­ily rela­tion­ships are not sup­posed to play a role in any one’s chances of suc­cess. The Wiki­pe­dia defin­i­tion of neo­pot­ism is:

“Favour­it­ism gran­ted to rel­at­ives or friends, without regard to their merit”.

When Ian and I under­took some research in Viet­nam we came across inter­est­ing recruit­ment prac­tices. From our inter­views with local man­agers it became clear that using fam­ily net­works is an accep­ted recruit source for staff.

From our data we formed the hypo­thesis that recruit­ment in coun­tries with a col­lect­ive nature, such as Viet­nam, is primar­ily con­duc­ted through social net­works. This in con­trast with the developed world, with a high level of indi­vidu­al­ism, where, spe­cially in the gov­ern­ment sec­tor, a level play­ing field is cre­ated by pub­licly advert­ising positions.

Although Viet­namese prac­tices smell like the dreaded nepot­ism, some people made clear to us that the fam­ily net­works are used as a primary recruit­ment source, but within that pool of people, the selec­tion is nev­er­the­less based on merit. A train­ing man­ager of a large com­pany told us that they have many teams in which sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of one fam­ily work together and that this cre­ates a great cul­ture and sense of com­mon pur­pose within the organisation.

This sense of com­mon pur­pose is con­sidered a holy grail by most organ­isa­tions in the developed, indi­vidu­al­istic, world. Many activ­it­ies are aimed at ‘align­ing’ people to the com­mon pur­pose of the organ­isa­tion. But given that most busi­nesses are a grab bag of people, work­ing together more by change than by com­mon pur­pose, this has proven to be an illus­ive goal.

Research in Aus­tralia has shown that people recruited through anonym­ous sources such as news­pa­per advert­ise­ments missed almost twice as many days as those recruited through other sources, such as employee refer­rals.1. This under­writes the import­ance of using social net­works as a source of recruitment.

Human beings are inher­ently social beings and we like to spend our time with people we like. Within that we have a def­in­ite bias for people that we are related to. One of the major reas­ons many people don’t enjoy work is not because of the work itself but the people they are forced to social­ise with. Open recruit­ment pro­cesses aimed at cre­at­ing a level play­ing field are prob­lem­atic and many organ­isa­tions use abstract tools, such as per­son­al­ity tests, and ref­er­ence checks, which  have been dis­cussed in Hypo­thet­icorp recently.

Next time when hir­ing people, look around your imme­di­ate and exten­ded social circle and see if there is any­body you would like to work with that can poten­tially do the job. The moral of the story is: nepot­ism is not inher­ently bad, as long as the final selec­tion is based on merit.

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Notes
  1. Breaugh, James A. (1981) Rela­tion­ship between recruit­ing sources and employee per­form­ance, absent­ee­ism, and work atti­tudes. Academy of Man­age­ment Journal 24(1): 142–147. [↩]

The Shaman and the Consultant

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Consultants are like shamans

Ima­gine you are an anthro­po­lo­gist, pos­ted in a remote vil­lage in Papua New Guinea to study how people man­age problems.

The village’s yam crops have been reduced dra­mat­ic­ally and the vil­lage is on the brink of fam­ine. Nobody knows what has caused the crop fail­ures — the yams just refuse to grow. One vil­lage elder says he has heard about a power­ful shaman from a vil­lage far away and pro­poses to engage her to make sure they will not go hungry.

The shaman arrives and every­body rejoices. She walks around the vil­lage, mak­ing strange noises and sniff­ing everything and dan­cing strangely. She announces to have found the cause and organ­ises a large ritual that will remove the cause of the crop failures. All vil­la­gers gather and sing and dance all night. Every­body feels great and the next day go back to work­ing the fields, know­ing that the cause for the crop fail­ures has been neut­ral­ised. The fol­low­ing crop is plen­ti­ful and the fam­ine that was nearly upon them was magic­ally aver­ted. Some years later you return to the vil­lage. Most houses are gone and people have moved away — recent crops failed and every­body went to the city to look for work.

Now ima­gine you are a man­age­ment sci­ent­ist, pos­ted in a ran­dom cor­por­a­tion to study how they solve problems. The company’s rev­enue stream has been reduced dra­mat­ic­ally and the com­pany is on the brink insolv­ency. Nobody knows what has caused the reduc­tion in rev­enue — cus­tom­ers seem to simply ignore their products. One of the exec­ut­ives says she has heard about a man­age­ment con­sult­ant from Eng­land and pro­poses to engage him to make sure they avoid insolvency.

The con­sult­ant arrives and every­body is very pos­it­ive. He goes around the organ­isa­tion, ask­ing every­body ques­tions and stud­ies piles of doc­u­ments. He announces to have found the cause of the reduced rev­enue and organ­ises motiv­a­tional ses­sions that will make things better. All employ­ees gather and share many great ideas with each other. Every­body feels elated and the next day they go back to work, know­ing that the cause for poten­tial fin­an­cial dis­aster has been neut­ral­ised. Pretty soon, cash flow is pos­it­ive again and even a small profit is made. Some years later you return to the same build­ing only to find a great “For Rent” sign on the door. The com­pany recently went bank­rupt after all.

These stor­ies are based on what hap­pens in tri­bal soci­et­ies and cor­por­a­tions around the world — only the names have been changed to pro­tect the inno­cent.1. This is not a judge­ment about either sham­ans or man­age­ment con­sult­ants. They both per­form import­ant func­tions in their social universes.

we believe in a rational sci­entific approach

Med­ical anthro­po­lo­gists dis­tin­guish between sick­ness and dis­ease. Dis­ease is the phys­ical aspect of a prob­lem whereas sick­ness is a psy­cho­lo­gical dimen­sion.2. Both con­sult­ants and sham­ans are pos­sible very good at heal­ing sick­ness, but are in most cases not able to heal dis­ease. Just like sci­entific medi­cine is required to heal dis­ease, a sci­entific approach is required to heal companies.

Too many man­agers believe that chan­ging lines and boxes on an organ­isa­tion chart or organ­ising motiv­a­tional team build­ing ses­sions are suf­fi­cient to solve mana­gerial prob­lems. Employ­ees are on the receiv­ing end of a mul­ti­tude of man­age­ment fads and short lived pro­jects. At Hypo­thet­icorp we believe in a rational sci­entific approach, based on data, to solv­ing the hard issues. Good qual­ity data and good qual­ity stat­ist­ical ana­lysis are the only ways to find solu­tions to hard problems.

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Notes
  1. Schuyt, T. N. M., & Schuijt, J. J. M. (1998). Rituals and rules: about magic in con­sultancy. Journal of Organ­iz­a­tional Change Man­age­ment, 11(5), 399–406. [↩]
  2. Miller Van Blerkom, L. (1995). Clown Doc­tors: Shaman heal­ers of West­ern medi­cine. Med­ical Anthro­po­logy Quarterly, 9(4), 462–475. [↩]